


Steam

by soundofez



Category: Pocket Monsters SPECIAL | Pokemon Adventures
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Growing Up, Implied Sexual Content, also also bit of nuzlocke thrown in with a side of ofc oops, also angst enough to maybe need to punch something, possible ooc, sweet enough to melt your teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:10:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundofez/pseuds/soundofez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One is fire and one is water but when they come together they don't know which is which.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steam

**Author's Note:**

> Started toward the end of 2011 intended as a short pwp, and then it grew a plot, and then I spent a year trying to wrap the plot into something that wouldn't explode into a full-chaptered story, because then I'd never finish.
> 
> Enjoy!

He hides behind a façade of ribbons and glamour, but when he fights he still feels the same old thrill of battle. He is ashamed of himself, ashamed that he actually has to beat down the part of him that leaps when she demands a battle, ashamed that if he isn't absolutely careful he might slip back into the battle-hungry beast that he was as a boy and hurt her again. He sees what she has become ~~_because of him_~~ , and he feels so guilty ~~_stupid beast_~~ that he has ruined something as pure as she.

She never really outgrew her pretty dresses and frills, but she doesn't feel comfortable wearing them anymore. She loves the clothes he sews for her, but the image of what he has become ~~_because of her_~~ makes her uneasy ~~_useless weakling_~~ , so she scoffs and sneers and submits to his pecking with no small amount of reluctance. She doesn't mind when he mistakes her reluctance for uncouth savagery. She wishes he would see that what she has become is for him, that he would return to what he was so that she can wear her dresses again.

* * *

They dance around one another for years after the incident at Battle Frontier in the old pattern, teasing and taunting and insulting like always, playing upon their childish cruelty _(but they are not children anymore)_ , not expecting anything to go wrong.

_Gawd, Ruby, yer such a **wimp**!_

_Excuse me for not being a **barbarian** like you, Sapphire._

The same words repeated time and time again seep into the cracks of their friendship, freezing and melting and freezing and melting again and again and again, until one day

_I hate you!_

_It's mutual, you know._

_Rarghhh! Get out of my base, you— **ugh**!_

_**Your** base? This secret place is as much mine as it is yours, cavegirl._

_Fine, then! If you don't leave, **I** will!_

they break.

* * *

He watches her leave and turns back to Mimi, unconcerned. They have argued like this so many times that he doesn't feel it anymore, doesn't feel the anger or the disdain that his words imply, doesn't really mean any of it. The words are only the steps of a dance they have been dancing since they were children. He has forgotten what they are dancing to, forgotten that he once despised her, forgotten that he is hiding how much he loves her now, forgotten how much he loves her.

Mimi bears his affections in silence for the rest of the afternoon.

She does not come back.

Instead, she watches him for weeks after she leaves, sitting on a branch far away enough that she knows he would never be able to see her, with or without his stupid glasses. He looks like her absence means nothing to him, grooms his pokémon with the same lavish attention even without her around. At times, newly finished with a group accessory for his whole team to wear, he will march them proudly around the base, as though he knows she is watching. She sees the look in his eyes, though, or she thinks she does. There is a split second when he whirls around to proudly display a new accessory and looks almost lost.

Toro stays out of her way. She knows he talks pokémon talks with Zuzu when he thinks she's not looking.

She does not go back.

* * *

Five years.

They are not children anymore. They are anything but children.

She has returned to the elegance she loved in her youngest years, allowed herself to indulge in the nuances of fashion, though she still refuses to wear makeup or anything else she deems unnatural. She is rarely with the rest of the Elite Four, who lounge around amusing themselves as they wait for a challenger to appear. Serious challengers only come once in a blue moon; only two got through the Four, one of them twice, and they never managed to faint even the pokémon she chose specifically to give them the type advantage. ~~They both look the same, though— they both look like **him**.~~ After she utterly destroys the first one for the second time, she scolds the Four for slacking and makes them train with her and the other gym leaders for an entire summer.

Sometimes she visits contest halls. She doesn't tell anyone. She certainly never tells him. When she sees him, more than she would like to admit, she lingers near the exit and does not let him see her. She doesn't want him to see that she is going back to who she used to be even though he is still trapped, confined within the elegance that he forced himself into so long ago in penance for her. Once, she sees Marge peck him on the cheek after she wins a contest he in which he played substitute judge. She leaves the building immediately after witnessing that scene, her face perfectly composed even under the hood that she wears to keep herself hidden, hiding her tears from even herself.

He does not shy from battle anymore, but he does not seek it as he did in his youth. He designs clothes, now, for people and pokémon both. His style is alternately plain and byzantine, fluctuating with his mood and his thoughts, but his fabrics are cotton and silk and wool instead of the more popular synthesized polyester or cashmere, and his colors sometimes wild and sometimes elegant, and Marge teases him endlessly about her until he finally snaps at her to stop.

Every now and again he will answer a commission to judge a contest, and though he only ever officially judges Normal Ranks he will visit and criticize all the others. Every now and again he will enter a contest, and he enters all divisions. He has only lost once, and that to a fiercely promising lass in a beauty contest when Mimi took pity on the girl and graciously bowed out of the contest. ~~She looked nothing like her, but her force of will, so familiar that it hurt, was a slap in his face.~~ More rarely he will tour the Hoenn gyms, and give the gym leaders advice on training; sometimes, he accepts requests from his father or his master to battle in order to keep his senses sharp.

He lives in Lilycove now. He never goes to Littleroot, doesn't even venture as far as Oldale. He never visits the Elite Four. He saw her once, visiting a contest, and promptly vacated the city. He doesn't know why he is running from her now, or when he started.

It has been five years since they last spoke, and not a week goes by that one does not think of the other.

* * *

~~( Ruby, there's someone I want you to meet! This is— )~~

_Sapphire._

~~( Yes, Sapphire, the Champion, of course. Sapphire, this is— )~~

_Ruby._

~~( Wonderful, we all know each other! Let's— )~~

Quietly, _Those clothes..._

~~( —have a seat, shall we? The dinner is starting soon— )~~

Defensive, _What about them?_

~~( —alright, Ruby? ...Ruby? )~~

_I designed them..._ A confession.

~~( Er, come now, how about we all just have a seat and—)~~

_... I know._ And they come close,

~~( Ruby? Sapphire? )~~

and they stop and turn around.

* * *

She looks beautiful in the clothes he had designed for her but never thought she would wear. His heart aches unbearably, and he realizes for the first time in a long time exactly how much he loves her and how much he cannot. His mouth pulls flat, and he turns away from her, more in love with her than he ever was before.

His eyes are cut gems, hard and unreadable. They take her in, swallow her, and she swells under their intensity. When he turns away, his mouth tight and unwelcoming, she remembers suddenly the old ache in her heart. She is dimly surprised that she did not move, did not embrace him like she so wanted to, and regrets more than ever her weakness and cowardice.

* * *

They see one another with increasing frequency through these times as Team Zodia rises and Hoenn falls under the shadow of another power-hungry organization. This one seeks Rayquaza for reasons as yet unknown.

Her involvement in the impending crisis is obvious, as she is the daughter of the esteemed Professor Birch, and ostensibly the strongest pokémon trainer in Hoenn. Ruby, meanwhile, is the son of Gym Leader Norman, even if he is vaunted as the region's (and Johto's) greatest coordinator, and he did step forward when Zodia began showing the first stirrings of ill will. He acts as coy as he did through the Aqua/Magma crisis some ten years ago, and the Jirachi incident with their senior 'dex holders a year or so after that, but no one is really fooled, and very few are surprised when they see how intensely focused he is on every mission.

She has hopes that he will return her feelings as the crisis intensifies, as they spend more and more time together struggling against the threat, but he is always stilted when he speaks to her, when he is at all around her. He is holding her at a distance, and she cannot understand why. She would think that he is dating Marge if the former Magma hadn't fallen to pieces laughing at the idea upon confrontation.

He cannot bear to let her know how much he loves her. She deserves someone better than him. He tells himself to stay disciplined, to always remember restraint, to stay away from her, but he can't. He remembers the call of duty that forced him into action the last time Hoenn was threatened, and he now embraces it even though he knows it will put him at her side, where he wants to be forever but knows he can never stay.

* * *

Through a sweep of a Zodia base she notes vaguely that the opposing team has been snapping up all the trainers that might have been able to take her place as champion. She wonders what has been done to them, for though they fight brilliantly, they do not speak, and they use only one pokémon instead of a full team. Instead, they generally appear in droves, six at a time, as though they are all one team, and they act like it, too. Knocking out a pokémon also affects its trainer: usually they faint with their pokémon, but they have been reported to attack opposing trainers or even pokémon as though they themselves are not entirely human.

She sees it happen for herself for the first time, standing frozen when a boy ~~he has black hair and red **red** eyes~~ lunges at her, teeth bared, his mightyena downed. She feels her own eyes widen and instinctively raises her arms to guard herself and feels time slow to a painful crawl. Her arms won't move fast enough, and she is suddenly hyperaware of her exposed throat.

Then he is in front of her, his hat mysteriously gone, his black hair so dark it glows almost navy blue where the light shines on it, and she is dimly shocked at how much broader his back is than she remembers. The fabric of his shirt clings to his skin, and she watches in fascination as his muscles flex. Time rights itself again, and she watches his foot jerk up, connect with the boy's stomach, send him skidding across the ground. The boy looks up in time for Ruby's other foot to crash into the side of his head, knocking him out.

He does not turn to look at her, but brings his arms from a defensive crouch to his side. Popo floats to him, carrying his hat, and he takes it and absently jams it on his head before returning all of his team except Zuzu to their pokéballs.

Her eyes fix on the blood creeping down his arm, and she speaks very calmly into the pokégear tucked around the right side of her head.

_Operator, Alpha 2 injured, requesting mission abort._

_Request cancelled. I'm fine._

She grits her teeth at his statement.

_You're hurt, Ruby._

_I can treat it. We will finish the mission. Hoenn is relying on us, Sapphire. Don't let a little thing like this get to you._

_A **little thing**? Ruby, you are injured._

He kneels on the floor, shrugging off his bag and pulling out the roll of bandages that he keeps for his pokémon. He does not show discomfort at the thought of having to use them for himself.

_Sapphire, this is a bite that isn't even from a pokémon. I've had worse._

Her eyes fix on the band of his hat, where she knows he hides his old scar, as he raises his arm to Zuzu and murmurs under his breath to the swampert. Zuzu obligingly provides a gentle stream of water that his trainer uses to wash the bite left by the boy.

_I know... but a bite from a human can be just as bad as a pokémon's. You need—_

_I need to finish this mission as quickly as possible so I can get professional treatment._

His voice brooks no argument, and his logic is sound against her feeble excuses. She looks at his face, but his eyes are trained on wrapping his bandage. Tying it off neatly with hand and teeth, he finally stands and gives Zuzu a grateful pat before returning the faithful swampert to its pokéball.

* * *

She gazes around the laboratory numbly, taking in the equipment, the supports, the pokémon and humans floating in liquid and chemicals. She knows in her mind what Zodia has been doing to the trainers they captured, but her heart rejects the truth.

He is shocked, too, but already he is leaning over a screen, trying to decipher the information it displays. In a moment he has released one of the victims from its glass encasement— or rather, one pair of victims from their laboratory vials.

_They're fusing DNA, person to pokémon._

She is silent for a moment, unable to find the words to describe her feelings. He doesn't say anything more, simply moves onto the next experiment after setting the newly freed but unconscious victims against a wall of the lab. Toro emerges from his pokéball unbidden and looks at her questioningly.

_This is sick._

He doesn't reply, only continues freeing victims. Toro follows her lead and helps her arrange the poor creatures as comfortably as she can against the cold, sterile tile that make up the floor and walls of this freak laboratory.

* * *

~~Too bad. We were watching the two of you, you know. The most powerful trainers in Hoenn... connecting you to a pokémon would have produced our best. Ruby we could have given Groudon, and you Kyougre, of course.~~

_Ruby!_

~~You love him, don't you? So come with us. I'll take you to our leader. We'll be good to you, of course; no use hurting our Legendary Trainers.~~

_Ruby, answer me!_

~~We'll give you strength and power. That is what you want, isn't it? _You want to be strong like I am._~~

_Ruby, please!_

_~~Why would you want to be strong?~~ _

_Ruby._

_~~You are disgusting.~~ _

_I..._

_~~Barbarian.~~ _

_**It's because I love you.**_

* * *

She's done waiting

_Ruby._

She will not take no for an answer. She wants to be with him before one of them is lost to the crisis. She will not allow herself to lose him without ever having him.

_Sapphire?_

He flinches at her voice, recognising it as the one she uses when something has gone wrong— when Zodia has made another advance, when an ally has been captured, when some poor pokémon has _died_ , because even if they are sturdier than humans, they are all too far from immortal.

~~_You_ ~~

He is speaking, but the words from his mouth are not the words that she seeks. She wants him to say what he said in her dream, to finish what he started to say in her nightmare of a dream which woke her in a state of panicked certainty, which had her rolling to crouch on the floor out of old half-forgotten instinct.

~~_love—?_ ~~

He is frightened to find her in his face, right up against him where he doesn't know if he can hold himself back, right where he's never allowed her since before their long time apart.

_Sapphire, what's wro—_

and she is kissing him.

He can't think. Something has happened, something is wrong, but he doesn't know what because he can't think and he's scared but it feels so right that he can't fight it, he doesn't even remember what he's fighting—

She hopes he can feel all that she is putting into this kiss, all her desperation and her sadness and her love, hopes that he won't push her away, hopes that he will respond to her, tell her that he loves her too in that soft and rough voice of his, his quiet I like you too, words that he said to her once a long time ago, but she wants him to also say the words he's never said to her before.

_Love me, Ruby._

Suddenly he remembers, and the first word out of his mouth

_Sapphire,_

is not followed by the words he means to say.

_**I love you.**_

She doesn't let him speak after that, doesn't let him say the words his is desperate to say, doesn't let him tell her that he can't. There is only the whirlwind of fierce passion and blue eyes and suddenly he's in her room on her bed under her, choking on air as she robs him of breath, attacking his face and throat and chest and clothes and he can't think again, can only beg her don't stop, Sapphire, please even though he is dimly aware that the words are wrong, wrong, wrong.

_Sapphire, **wait** , I'm—_

And he spills himself over his shirt and her trousers. She gives a surprised squeak when the liquid splatters on her hand. He could die of mortification now. Hell, he's still got all of his clothes on, even his hat, though it's lopsided, and so does she, though she is remedying that now

_Sapphire._

and there's his voice,

_wait a—_

_Was it good fer ya?_

and her accent has slipped back, she realizes with a blush, though it's a little late for modesty now.

_Sapphire, we can't—_

Why is he saying that _now_? Is it because

_Is there someone else?_

_we can't do this— what? No! There could never— I mean—_

_I wasn't good enough? Do you hate me?_

_No! I mean, I— I— Sapphire, I— it's not you, I swear, it's just— I'm not—_

_Why, Ruby?_

_I can't do this with you, you— you're Sapphire, you're the most innocent person in the world and I ruined that, I **hurt** you, it's all I've ever done, I can't do this, I can't hurt you again, Sapphire, **don't let me!**_

He is clutching at his hat, covering his face in his hands as he shouts at her, frantic, panicked. She puts her hands over his, tries to pull them away, but he is too strong, even now after she has been Champion for so long while he designed clothes ~~that she **wears**~~ , and she is still weak, as weak as she has always been, while he is as strong as ever, even now trying to protect her, to keep her safe from

_You wimp._

**him**. He is shocked; his hands twitch, loosen just enough for her to wrench his hands from his face, pulling his hat with with them ~~( no! )~~

She leans forward and he leans back to escape her but suddenly finds himself flat on his back, trapped between her and the bed, and he can't find his hands in her eyes, can't find anything of himself reflected in bright blue, because she is looking at him and he wants her to **stop** but he can't remember why, he can't remember anything.

_Whet're ya pertectin' silly ol' me for, ya dummy?_

He opens his mouth, gets a syllable out

_Sa_

before she leans even closer and kisses him chastely, just her lips pressing softly against his and his pressing softly back, reluctantly but **eagerly** and _softly_ back. Her hands release his wrists from between them and slide to his shoulders and neck and cheeks, framing his head. His arms draw around her waist slowly, and then wrap around it, loose and uncertain, but suddenly tense when she pulls marginally away. She tucks her head into his chest with a sigh, and her hands drift to his collar before wrapping under his arms to rest on his back.

They lie like that a while in absolute silence, he exposed and nervous but neither jittery nor panicked, she simply breathing in his scent, not caring (or maybe simply forgetting) about her messy state of undress, both relishing in shared closeness that has been wordlessly forbidden from them for so long.

_I love you._

His mind is still too fuzzy to pull together a lie, so the words come in a rushed whisper that he tells himself he will take care when he can think.

_I love you, too._

Her arms wrap around him more snugly, and she pushes her nose into his collarbone where he can relish her breath tickling his skin.

She dozes off. He doesn't try to slink away, doesn't even move for a while after he thinks she's asleep. When he does move, it is to carefully tuck himself away (she stirs slightly at the movement but does not wake, and he does not risk the metal rasp of the zipper), and then he wraps his arms around her again. His eyes keep sliding to the clock ticking on the bedside dresser. He thinks to wake her and then depart for his room, but he keeps putting it off, keeps losing himself in his thoughts of her. He doesn't remember doing so, but he finds himself hugging her frame to his own, her head nestled against his collarbone, his nose pressed against her hair, smelling the spicy freshness of the outdoors that is her scent and hers alone.

He doesn't remember closing his eyes, but the next thing he knows there is a pressure on his sternum and his hand snaps upward to grasp it. It closes around something narrow and he opens his eyes to see her wrist, small and delicate as she tries not to be, in his grip.

She is frozen, her eyes wide, a ralts caught in headlights. Her eyes search his, and he feels his emotions surging through his body to betray him. For an age or maybe a second, they hold one another's gaze, entranced by namesake gemstones.

He carefully releases her wrist. Her clothes hang off of her, exposing her, so his hands move to her shoulders, take the fabric slipping off her shoulders and hitch it up, slowly reach around her to fasten the clasps behind her. Her face flushes. His hands stall on her back.

She is beautiful. She is beautiful and overwhelmingly cute, even though she tries to be cool and tough, and she is so much smarter than he ever remembers to give her credit for. He leans upward...

* * *

They are engaged.

Their rings are subtle, flat bands that hug their fingers and lay quietly under their gloves. Marge, of all people, figures it out first, perhaps because (Sapphire has to beat down a flare of jealousy) she has been friends with Ruby for so long.

The news doesn't get to anyone else until after the Zodia crisis is ended— quickly and suddenly with less than a quarter the drama that accompanied Hoenn's last crises. It's something of a mystery how one day they were going strong and the next they were gone.

They met her, of course: the mysterious trainer who doesn't belong. She shot through the gym leaders and the Elite Four and, yes, even Sapphire, so quietly and efficiently that Hoenn never knew she was there. She was the one who brought Zodia down single-handedly with such grim determination, and each of her pokémon made it through with barely a scratch. She told them why after she defeated them, of course: of her affliction, what she called the Ninetales' curse, what they have since learned is an offshoot of the plague known as the Nuzlocke Challenge ~~as though it is a **choice**~~ , an affliction which has torn many of her pokémon away from her and has left her sad and tired but not bitter or hopeless. At least, not yet, she tells them, and then she wishes them luck and prosperity and takes her leave to head to the Kanto-Johto continent.

* * *

They come together and two becomes three.

He is Ruby and she is Sapphire and there is Amethyst and they are happy.


End file.
